As with most projects there are highlights to be celebrated and low points to be learned from and to be successful you need to realize why something went the direction it did. For the Retro PC Subwoofer Project it started out well with an Isobaric design that performed extremely well, though after some in-depth testing using only a single driver it turns out, the Isobaric nature of the enclosure did absolutely nothing beyond adding a second driver to the mix.
In the next phase the enclosure volume was halved to determined if Isobaric loading would actually start showing some benefits and even that design failed showing that with modern subwoofers you already get pretty good sound and the gains from this unique speaker loading are often diminished with no practical reason for doing one.
Unfortunately, this experiment proved that trying to improve our Logitech Z313 with a secondary driver would have been a waste of time.
The next design went back to an “old skool” concept where you simply add more drivers to a single enclosure with the result being a nice boost in efficiency at the expense of enclosure dimensions. Simply put, when you double your woofers, you typically need to double the enclosure size to compensate. This design worked extremely well but the size of the final prototype was outside the project parameters where we wanted a “small” box.
Our focus for this episode was on the final two designs (as of this recording) where Dennis experimented with two new box designs just to see what would happen. The first was a Series Tuned Design that got mixed results while the secondary design is showing some promise.
Be sure to check out the project videos on the Hardware Asylum YouTube channel and, if you feel inclined, leave a comment, like a video and subscribe for more content.
Episode 141 featured music:
Little People - Start Shootin' (http://www.littlepeoplemusic.com/)
